Introduction

Toastmasters International (TI) is a non-profit educational organization that focuses on providing professionals with a safe space to develop their communication, and leadership skill. It was founded by Ralph C. Medley on October 22, 1924 in Santa Ana, California, who wanted young men to practice their communication skills in a safe and supportive environment. Over the last almost 100 years, the organization grew all over U.S and all around the world, with members consisting of various ethnicity, culture, nationality, background, and identities [1].

TMIKL was born as part of the Toastmasters International organization, and as far as I can tell, was started in 1977 by Peter Shepard as the oldest Toastmasters organization in Kuala Lumpur [2]. Now, it boasts more than 35 members, and more than 1000 meetings under its belt [3]. People who are in the know about TMIKL will describe it the same way, “The oldest club with the youngest members”. The club boasts a spirit of youth, and support.

How I came to join Toastmasters

The Right Tool for the Right Job

A big reason as to why I joined Toastmasters will be due to an unconvensional reason, my laptop. I was made aware of the difficulties that TMIKL was having with its hybrid setup over the last year as my brother frequently talked about how the various devices they had just aren’t suited for the job. It was a matter of certain laptops not having the appropriate and necessary HDMI port, something that professional IT officers have to deal with on a daily basis. They managed to get through it just fine during the last year. During April or May, my brother took a good look at my laptop and saw that it has not only an HDMI port, but also, a USB-C port, and a USB port. Basically, my laptop had all the ports that TMIKL needed for its hybrid setup.

Upon finishing my studies, I had nothing to do, and my brother persuaded me to come over, and go to a test meeting for a meeting for a new club that was about to be established. I was blown away by the positivity, and support given by everyone during the meeting. I had expected some false sense of support, ones given typically by the corpo-drones but, that wasn’t what happened at the meeting. Seeing as I was pleasantly surprised by the ordeal. My brother told me to go to the TMIKL meeting, not just to see the meeting for myself but, also so that he can use my laptop for the meeting setup. Wanting to help him, I followed him along and went for the meeting.

Having all the ports needed for the meeting, the setup for the meeting went smoothly, and most everyone agreed that the overall experience was positive for both the physical attendees and the online attendees. This is much to the chagrin of the previous president, who exclaimed how the setup was much difficult last year. I didn’t know what to say other than, it was the right tool for the right job.

Previous Clubs Experience

One of the reasons I held off from committing myself to Toastmasters for so long is from my experience with a previous speech-oriented club, which was a debate club. The debate was very competitive, everyone held a culture that you would be excluded from if you disagreed with any of the members, and it was a lot of work trying to just be a member of the club. I was under the assumption at the time that Toastmasters was pretty much going to be ran in the same spirit as this club. A big fear that I had was that the work load related to the club would take a big chunk of my time away from my studies, time that I couldn’t afford to take away because I had a scholarship to maintain.

I recognise now that Toastmasters does not force you to take up work that you don’t want to and the Toastmasters are often understanding when it comes to your work-life balance. I saw a lot of support given to members who are struggling due to work reasons, and typically people will step up if you say you can’t make it for a reason.It definitely was a wasted opportunity for me to disregard Toastmasters for that reason but, it was a choice made due to circumstances at the time.

My Icebreaker speech reflection

As is tradition in Toastmasters, I had given an icebreaker speech at TMIKL, which was a speech to introduce yourself, and to reaffirm your reasons in joining Toastmasters by declaring it to the members of the club. If I had to say, my icebreaker speech was nothing extraordinary. Compared to the “standards” sets at TMIKL, my speech was kinda bad. It was definitely a learning opportunity for me and I enjoyed giving that speech. Although a lot of people would say this is a bad thing, to fail. I know a lot of people would do whatever it takes to never fail, taking classes after classes, lessons after lessons, and notes after notes to ensure their speech is perfect. In my opinion, circumstances in a speech always changes. Although it feels bad when your speech doesn’t go the way you want, you’ll just have to deal with it which was something you learn very easily by failing. This wouldn’t help you be a good speaker but you’ll end up being a more flexible speaker in my opinion.

I learned a lot now about how to make your speech better, by making it more personal, making it into a story, and using a variety of body languages and tonal variety. The last one is really the most important one. Do you know anyone that is so energetic that you want to spend your whole day with them? That is why. Humans are really focused on the body language and tonal variety when we speak, a lot more than we think we do. It is in fact no surprise that these are the most important aspects in telling a story. I learned how to tell better stories and to connect with people a lot better now. Often, when someone calls you weird or creepy, it is because of your body language, something that Toastmasters ended up teaching me more than my parents or my peers ever did, even if it was done unitentionally by me giving speeches.

Conclusion

Despite only being in Toastmasters for 4 months, I definitely learned a lot from Toastmasters, more than I thought I would. I am not sure about the connections I made in Toastmasters. Connections and networking are one of the things I struggled a lot in life, more than I like to admit. It is my hope that Toastmasters would help me improve in this aspect but I have to admit, Toastmasters is not a therapy group. Toastmasters help you by making you do stuff, and being supportive in you doing so. This has definitely helped in my confidence and abilities. Often, in being good at something, the most difficult step is the first step. It isn’t a fast solution, but it is a more rounded solution and I definitely encourage everyone reading this to join Toastmasters.

References

  1. “Toastmasters International History,” Toastmasters.org, 2018. https://www.toastmasters.org/about/history (accessed Dec. 19, 2023).
  2. “TMIKL (51-1997) Kuala Lumpur: History,” TMIKL (51-1997) Kuala Lumpur. https://tmikl.blogspot.com/p/history_22.html (accessed Dec. 19, 2023).
  3. “Club Status,” dashboards.toastmasters.org. https://dashboards.toastmasters.org/ClubReport.aspx?id=00001997 (accessed Dec. 19, 2023).